


Mirror Image

by Lilachigh



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-14 00:09:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2170521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilachigh/pseuds/Lilachigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy is finding life difficult after her mother's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror Image

Mirror Image by Lilachigh

The fourth vamp I dusted yesterday evening was female. To be fair, it’s usually men who get turned. Not sure why. Maybe there’s more biting and licking done by female vamps, more draining and drinking by the guys. Who knows? Who cares?

It was a run-of-the-mill dusting. The first three guys had been easy. Only the last one had put up any sort of a fight and, at the end of the day, there was only ever going to be one result. He died.

I sat now and watched the grass and mud erupting from the grave, the dead flowers falling in all directions. I was bored, to tell the truth. I could have gone home but home at the moment means Dawnie and although she doesn’t cry twenty-four seven any more, little things start her off. 

Clearing out Mom’s closets, the third Disney coffee mug in the kitchen – the one with Donald Duck printed on it - that will never be drunk out of again. The dent her head made in her pillow that is slowly vanishing. All these things can make Dawn dissolve into floods. And you never know when something else is going to appear. You open a drawer and there are her car keys. You ring home and hear her voice on the answer-phone and for a long, long second, you think – I was wrong! It was all a nightmare. I’ve woken up! Mom’s OK. 

But you weren’t, it isn’t, you don’t and she never will be again.

Me, well, I’ve done crying. Dusting vamps is my release. And as this one lurched upright, wearing, by the way, the most hideous blue dress you’ve ever seen, hair matted – what is it with vampires and lack of personal grooming? - face contorted by the demon inside, I leapt off the tombstone I was sitting on and thrust the stake into her chest.

Poof! Black dust flying and she was gone. I brushed her remains off my arms, shook her out of my hair, kicked the broken turf back into some sort of order and turned for home.

Spike was standing behind me watching, frowning. What the hell did he have to frown about? “Enjoy the show?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Very – professional, pet. Very — cold.”

I stared at him, puzzled. “Of course it was professional, Spike. Slaying is my profession. Remember? I’m certainly not going to be a doctor or run for Congress or take up photography, now am I?”

“Shouldn’t be cold, though,” he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and rocking backwards and forwards on his heels. “Should be passionate. Slaying is a passion. You owe them passion.”

I laughed and even to me it sounded bitter. He was being a bigger idiot than usual. “I owe them death, Spike,” I said and walked away, back to the misery of home.

Tonight I was back in the same graveyard, patrolling, wasting time, when I realised there was someone else around. Sitting on the ground, next to the vamp’s empty grave, was a girl. She was about my age, short dark hair, on the plump side, what Mom would have called cuddly. She was patting the earth straight and in the moonlight I could see tears on her face.

She hardly bothered to look up as I touched her shoulder. “Someone’s messed up my Mom’s grave,” she sobbed. “Look, it’s all muddy. Who would do something like that?”

Can your heart stop beating and you still be alive? Mine did. “Your Mom?” I whispered.

The girl nodded. “Marion Rose Lovell – I haven’t even got the headstone carved yet! It’s going to have a rose on it, in memory.”

I found myself on my knees next to her. “When did she die?”

“Few weeks ago now. But it doesn’t seem like that long, it seems like – ”

“Yesterday.” I knew that feeling only too well.

“Yes. And now she’s all muddy and she hated mess and muddle. She liked things neat and tidy – she was always on at me about my room.”

“What else did she like?” My voice sounded odd.

There was a long pause. The girl wiped away the tears, leaving brown marks where the dirt from her fingers mingled with the mud and dust that unknown to her had once been Marion Rose Lovell. 

“White flowers, Celine Dion songs, her little silver car, strawberry shakes, ordinary things, I suppose. She wasn’t particularly clever or pretty. I don’t suppose she would seem special to anyone else. Just me. She was my Mom.”

And at some time, some place, Marion had been bitten and turned by a vamp and I’d staked her as she lurched from her grave. She’d been a mom who liked white flowers and strawberry shakes, not just a vamp in a hideous blue dress, and I’d staked her.

I wondered, not for the first time, would I have staked my Mom if she’d been turned? That was one nightmare that haunted me over and over again.  
How could I have done that? But how could I not?

There wasn’t a lot more to say to the girl. I never knew her name. We left the grave as tidy as we could, patting back the clods of earth. She never knew it was empty. She never will.

But I’m back by it again now. I went to another grave in another cemetery where I knew there would always be white flowers, laid by both her daughters every week. I knew she wouldn’t mind if I took some for Marion Rose.

I’m staring down at the white roses, lilies and gardenias, scattered across the brown earth. The scent is marvellous. It fills the dark air. I can’t imagine where he found them at this time of night. He’s kneeling, turns and holds out his hand to me, his face solemn. I kneel next to him and lay my Mom’s flowers with his – on Marion Rose Lovell’s grave.

As he often does, he knows immediately what I’m thinking. “Don’t feel guilty, Buffy,” he says. “You had to stake her. You had no choice. She was a demon and you’re the Slayer. But she was human once, remember. With a family who grieve for her.” He turns and even in the starlight his eyes are very blue. “We were all human – once.”

The end


End file.
